Before the Dawn
by Astralis
Summary: A case drives Sara to near obsession, and ends in disaster. NS.
1. Chapter One

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own them, and I'm not making any money off them. I'm just playing.

* * *

Afterwards, Catherine was glad that she had the night off when the call came in. It meant that Grissom and Greg got the two dead girls and Catherine got called to Desert Palm to do her "people person" thing. It was a hell of a task, but she would rather have done that than see the real aftermath of what had happened in that deserted factory. 

Her instructions from Grissom were to "try and do something with Sara." Catherine couldn't help feeling that Grissom was relieved to be dealing with the dead people in this situation, rather than live ones. He didn't acknowledge her when she said she'd been intending to take Lindsey out for breakfast before school, spend some quality time with her daughter for a change. He just said, in a dull tone, that he needed her.

Catherine hauled herself out of bed and went.

She was, after all, the people person.

The streets were nearly deserted, as was usually the case with the suburb around Desert Palm at two in the morning. Catherine, though focusing mostly on the road, seized the chance of easy driving for a little thought. To say she was angry, she thought, would have been inadequate. She'd been woken up in the middle of her night off to deal with a situation that had arisen through someone else's stupidity.

Pulling into the hospital parking lot, Catherine turned the Tahoe's key and sat for a few moments, gathering her thoughts and trying to dull the anger. This wasn't the time, or the place for overt displays of emotion. The media would no doubt be lurking around, and she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of getting any more dirt on CSI.

As for Sara and Nick could just wait until the hospital let them go - assuming, of course, that Ecklie and the Sheriff didn't get to them first, Catherine thought as she strode into the emergency room.

Catherine was familiar with blood. It came with the territory, after all; so much so she'd become almost immune to the sight of blood.

Despite herself, despite the fact that blood came so normally to her, despite the fact that she wasn't inclined to be sympathetic to Sara, she couldn't help a low exclamation when she found her co-worker sitting on the edge of a bed in a small cubicle and arguing with the nurse.

Catherine's immediate thought, which proved to be correct, was that there was no way all that blood could be Sara's. It wasn't - some was Nick's, and some belonged to the two dead girls - but the possibility that it was all hers was disturbing. Her right cheek had several stitches along what was clearly a deep cut running down to her jawbone and everything she was wearing seemed to have large quantities of blood on it.

Sara was insisting that nothing was wrong when Catherine, vaguely brandishing her credentials at the nurse, entered. "I just need to go home and sleep, and I will be fine."

The nurse seemed to be fairly equal to Sara. "I would not advise you to go anywhere until we've sewn you up."

"I don't need to be - " Sara stopped when spotted Catherine. "I'm fine, aren't I?"

"With that much blood on you?"

"Where's Nick?"

"I don't know."

"Catherine, I need - " Sara broke off her sentence again, but Catherine hadn't been designated the people person for nothing.

"I don't think you're getting anywhere near Nick till you're fit to leave the hospital."

The nurse stepped in again, probably with the hope that now Catherine was here, Sara would be more co-operative. "Sara, if you want to get out of here you need to let us see where you're hurt."

"_Sara_."

"Fine." Sara pulled her shirt over her head in one swift movement, balled it up, and threw it on the floor. She wasn't quick enough to disguise the look of pain on her face.

Catherine tried to look away, but there was as much blood on Sara's skin as there had been on her shirt, and most of it seemed to be coming from a nasty cut on her left breast, above her bra. _That_ was going to leave a scar.

"All right. I'll get that cleaned up, Sara, but I think you're going to need stitches."

Catherine let her eyes flit around the cubicle, trying to find something, anything to look at, rather than Sara sitting there in a blood-soaked bra. They'd never really been friends. They'd been out together, just the two of them, only once, and that after Sara had discovered that her boyfriend had been using her to cheat on his long-term partner. Catherine remembered the awkwardness of that evening spent in a small bar off the Strip, and how they hadn't quite known how to talk to each other. It had always been like that with them.

There were so many things Catherine wanted to say, about stupidity, and responsibility, but the first thing that came to mind was the memory of an explosion, and Greg lying pale and quiet in a hospital bed. She looked at Sara, who looked like a scared, guilty, vulnerable child, took a deep breath, and tried to forget that they weren't friends. She put a hand on Sara's shoulder, noted how cold she felt, and said, inadequately, "It'll be okay."

Sara shrugged Catherine's hand away, and then brushed at her eyes. "It's not okay." Sara pressed her hand to her mouth for a few moments, then removed it. "Can you find Nick? Please?"

The nurse, who was almost finished with the stitches, looked up at Catherine. "Who's Nick?" she asked.

"Sara's - " Catherine paused, and then used the two words together for the first time. " - boyfriend. He came in with her."

The nurse sighed, and her eyes met Catherine's. "If the nurses have finished with him - "

Catherine nodded. "Thanks."

It was a relief to be out of that cubicle. The air seemed somehow fresher out here, less to do with blood and Sara and what felt like Catherine's sudden uselessness as the "people person". Moving around the emergency room, all her senses alert in her search for Nick, she saw two uniformed policemen, whom she knew, questioning two teenaged boys in a corner. They were clearly homeless, more than likely part of the gang that based itself around the old deserted factory. She swallowed, and kept going.

The next familiar figure was Warrick, leaning against a wall with his eyes closed. No doubt, if it was Catherine's job to cope with Sara, Grissom had made it Warrick's job to deal with Nick. "Hey," she said, more grateful than she had ever expected for the friendly face. "Fancy seeing you here."

Warrick's eyes met hers for a moment and he smiled. Catherine caught herself, unexpectedly, smiling back. He always had that effect on her. "Yeah," he said. "Fancy that."

"So, you got Nick hidden away anywhere round here?"

Warrick shook his head. "Police have taken him back to the station. I'm supposed to be processing these kids when the police are done with them."

"We're covering our backs, huh? This is such a mess. Whole thing's going to go to hell." Catherine rubbed her forehead.

"Yup."

"How's Nick?"

"He's got twelve stitches."

"Sara's probably got more."

Warrick sighed. "Shit. This is a disaster."

Agreeing wholeheartedly, Catherine nodded. "Tell me about it. I don't know how the hell Nick could possibly have been so stupid."

"I notice you're not asking that about Sara. How is she?"

Catherine sighed. "Oh, who _knows_?"

"Shit," said Warrick again.

Catherine sighed again. She was tired, and hungry, and there was nothing she wanted to do less than go back to Sara, and then, later, probably have to speak to the media, who would be all over this like a pack of rabid dogs. "Well, I suppose I get to tell Sara she can't see Nick yet."

"Rather you than me."

"Ha. Thanks. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah. See ya," said Warrick, flashing another grin. Catherine wondered, as she walked, how it was he managed to still be smiling.

Sara was in a hospital gown now, and lying on her side as the nurse stitched up yet another deep cut, this one on her hip. She tensed as Catherine came in, but as Nick didn't follow the look of disappointment in her eyes was obvious. "Where's Nick?"

"The police have taken him back to the station. Sorry."

Sara tried to shrug. "It's okay," she said dully.

Catherine sighed, took up a post in the corner of the room, and waited.

* * *

**To Be Continued...**


	2. Chapter Two

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own them, and, sadly, I don't think I ever will.

* * *

6 DAYS EARLIER

The air smelled of death.

Sara thought, glancing sideways, that Greg wouldn't agree with that. He'd probably be more specific, pointing out that it smelt of urine, of week-old trash, of vehicle fumes, and only slightly of blood and dead human flesh. And then he'd be surprised that she'd summed it up so simply.

Never mind. It still smelled of death.

The girl was lying between a dumpster and the wall of the alleyway, on concrete stained with what was probably her own blood. Sara knelt down beside the body, and took a closer look at the girl's face. There was so much blood and swelling that she was probably unrecognisable, even to her friends. Well, that was assuming she had any. "I don't suppose we know who she is."

"The kid who called it in," said Brass, drily, "said she was called 'Blondie'."

"Blondie, huh?" Sara tilted her head to one side, as if a new angle would somehow enable her to really see the girl. Somewhere under the blood, it was entirely possibly that the girl's long, matted hair was blonde.

David Phillips was pushing his way through the crowd. Sara and Greg stood up and stepped away to allow David access to the body. From here, Sara was aware of just how many people had gathered round to watch - what? This was Las Vegas, and these people could be in the casinos, could be walking down the Strip or being married by a man in an alien costume. Yet they were in a dark, damp, dingy alleyway, looking at the beaten, bloodied body of a girl who was probably only barely in her teens. What was the attraction that drew people to death, horror and decay?

Working this job didn't inspire her into much confidence about human nature, her own as much as anyone else's.

When David had done what he needed - not that there was much for him to do at this stage - it was his turn to step back and allow Greg in with a camera. Sara kept her distance and watched as the flash lit up the scene like lightning, every photo illuminating for a split second an area of sordid shadow. Waiting for Greg to finish, with nothing to occupy her mind, Sara found herself wondering who would do this to a girl so young. A crime like this was a tragedy no matter who the victim was, but the deaths of young people always seemed especially traumatic. Was it because they had so much life left to live, but someone had stolen that chance from them? Or was it because the young were supposed to be innocent, supposed to be protected from the horrors of life by their elders?

Whoever this girl - Blondie - was, it was obvious that someone had failed to protect her. Someone, somewhere, knew who this was, knew she was on the edge, getting desperate - living on the streets by the look of her clothes. She was someone's daughter, and where was her mother?

Mothers were supposed to protect their children.

Sara shook her head, blinking, trying to clear the unwelcome thoughts and images from her mind. Greg was looking at her, and she shook her head one last time. "I've finished," he said, gesturing with the camera.

"Hey, you don't need me to babysit you any more. You don't need my approval on everything, Greg."

Greg nodded to David, and the coroner's assistants stepped in to remove the body. They got Blondie onto the gurney slowly, gently: she wasn't in rigor yet. Brass and the cops parted the crowd and the gurney was wheeled through in silence and loaded into the waiting vehicle. The doors slammed shut, the lights came on, and Blondie was driven away with the ceremony of distinguished funeral.

With the gruesome spectacle of the body gone, the crowds began to clear. Sara watched them leave, Greg by her side, for a minute or so. They'd go back to the Strip and the casinos and the bright lights now, and later they'd tell their admiring family and friends about this in minute detail. They'd follow the case in the media, and brag that they'd seen Blondie's body lying in the awful alleyway, and they'd bask in a kind of reflected glory.

"All right," she said, finally. "I'll process where the body was. You get the dumpster, Greg."

Greg didn't seem to have any jokes to crack.

* * *

Back at the lab, Blondie was lying in the morgue, stretched out like so many other bodies had been before her. She'd been curled in a fetal position back in the alleyway, and she looked older now, taller. Someone had cleaned her up, and it was now evident what a mess her face was in. Sara didn't need Doc Robbins's directions to tell her about the broken nose and jaw, the shattered teeth, the proof that someone had really had it in for this kid.

Doc Robbins solemnly took them through the catalogue of the girl's body: the bruising on her neck, the broken ribs, the three stab wounds in her chest which had been the immediate cause of death. Evidence of rape. Sara swallowed, and ignored a feeling of deja vu she couldn't quite place.

Blondie had probably been dead, the coroner estimated, several hours.

"Brass is getting that call traced, right?" Greg asked.

Sara didn't need any context to know what Greg was talking about. Whoever the kid was who'd called 911 about Blondie's dead body quite possibly knew something about what had happened, maybe even knew who had done it. "Yeah, the cops are on it."

There wasn't much to do. There was nothing unusual about the body, and no mystery about cause of death. Doc Robbins sent several samples off to Trace, and Sara and Greg emerged from the morgue back into the land of the living.

After a moment's hesitation, Sara gave Greg the job of processing Blondie's clothes. The only reason she was inclined to do it herself was because she didn't want to miss anything, and that was ridiculous. She meant what she'd said at the scene. Greg knew what he was doing now; he didn't need to have anyone hanging over his shoulder, ready to snatch the hard or important jobs away from him the second he looked like doing something wrong.

Besides, she recognised the look on his face. She'd felt it on her own so many times before. Greg wanted justice for Blondie, and he was going to do everything in his power to get it. He wouldn't miss a thing on the clothes.

Leaving him with the bloodied clothes, Sara went down to one of the computer labs. Her first priority had to be to find out who Blondie was, in order to be able to begin hunting for her killer. At the very least, Blondie needed to have her real name discovered and her family tracked down. She needed someone to grieve for her, and to find that someone they needed to know who she was.

Blondie had probably been missing for a while. Sara set the search parameters at females, aged between 10 and 13 at the time of their disappearance who had gone missing between six months and two years ago in Clark County. It was a fairly broad search, but even so she was aware that Blondie could be outside her age range, have been missing for a longer or shorter period, or have come from somewhere outside Clark County.

Never mind. Sara, although aware she was supposed to have breakfast with Nick, determined that she wasn't leaving the lab until she'd come up with a real name for the body in the morgue. If she missed breakfast, she missed breakfast. Nick wouldn't be pleased with her, but he'd understand. Grudgingly.

The computer came up with seven profiles. Sara eliminated the first girl, who was black, and the second, who was Hispanic. The third was a brunette, making it unlikely she was their girl. The fourth was taller than Blondie was.

The fifth profile stopped Sara with a jolt. For several minutes she felt unable to even process the information on the screen, until slowly, gradually, it began to filter through her mind. One and one made two, and two and two made four, and she was pretty sure they wouldn't need DNA samples to confirm the identity of the girl who had died in a dark alleyway.

Sara remembered the deja vu she'd felt in the morgue, and wondered if she was going to be sick.

* * *

**To Be Continued...**


	3. Chapter Three

**DISCLAIMER:** They're notmine, never have been, and never will be

* * *

Nick was lying on the sofa, waiting for Sara and watching Cartoon Network, when he heard her unlocking the front door. He sat up hastily and switched to the Discovery Channel, because he was _far_ too old to be watching cartoons. He heard something which sounded suspiciously like a pair of shoes hitting the wall haphazardly, as if they'd been, oh, _kicked_ off a person's feet, and then the sound of her bare feet heading for his bedroom. Bemused, Nick stayed where he was. He'd probably find out what was wrong soon enough.

Sara reappeared in a few minutes, now dressed in a pair of her jeans and one of his t-shirts, with her hair clipped up behind her head. Once again, it surprised him just how much of her stuff seemed to have accumulated at his house. He didn't even know how it had all gotten here, because he was sure it hadn't been conscious. "Hey," he said, pretending it was completely normal for her to show up at his house (which, okay, it was), send her shoes flying at the wall, and then march off to get changed without saying a word to him.

"Hi." Sara looked tired - exhausted, in fact. She shouldn't have been; she'd only worked an hour's overtime today.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I'm hungry. Are you hungry? I'll make us something to eat."

Nick opened his mouth to say that he was not, in fact, at all hungry, despite the fact he'd been waiting to have breakfast with her, but she'd already disappeared into the kitchen, probably wilfully ignoring his move to speak. He turned the volume down on the television and listened to her opening and shutting cupboards, and putting things on the counter. Resting his elbows on his knees, he considered whether it was really worthwhile to go in there and keep an eye on her. Sara cooked like she did everything else - passionately and single-mindedly. It was just that, unlike most other things, she really wasn't very good at cooking.

He decided against it. He'd rather she cooled off by destructing his kitchen than by destructing him. She'd probably had a bad night, not for the first time. It happened, in their line of work, and Sara always took it hard. Harder than most. It scared him, sometimes, and bothered him, that she had to take everything so personally.

Nick occupied himself for the next fifteen or so minutes watching the flickering, silent images on the TV and listening out for the sounds of any major disasters in the kitchen. He heard nothing alarming, and eventually Sara reappeared balancing two plates of normal-looking pancakes drowned in maple syrup. She thrust a plate at him, handed him a knife and fork, and sat down beside him, all without saying a word.

Nick took several tentative bites of his pancakes and decided that if there was anything wrong with them this time, the maple syrup covered it all up. He chewed thoughtfully, trying to detect any bizarre underlying tastes, and decided she'd learnt from the time she'd managed to put in far too much salt. "So how was your shift?" he asked, hoping she hadn't noticed him taste-testing his food.

"Fine," she said, shortly.

"_Sara_."

"What?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

Frustrated, Nick sighed and put his plate on the coffee table. "_Hey_ - "

"I'm fine," Sara snapped, rubbing her forehead.

"Yeah. Sure."

Sara propped her elbows on her knees and hid her head in her hands. "I'm sick of this."

Nick was suddenly terrified. She was sick of _this_? Of this strange thing that they had? "Sara - "

"Not _you, _okay? Never you."

Encouraged, and breathing again, Nick lay a hand on her back and ran it up her spine. "So what are you sick of?" He slid his hand along her shoulder, slid it halfway down to her arm, and pulled her against him. Her warm weight was a relief; maybe to her just as much as to him, because after a moment he felt her relax.

"This bloody job."

"Something happen tonight?"

"Do you remember a case? From just after I came to Vegas. The Collins murders. Mother, father, two sons, all killed... two girls left alive..."

Remembering, Nick took the clip out of her hair and ran his fingers through it. "Place was a bloodbath."

"One of the girls." Sara drew a deep breath. "She was only about five at the time. Brenda. Turned out she was product of her father's incest with the older sister, and the father was abusing Brenda too..."

"Yeah. Wasn't that the kid you took to the hospital?"

"Yeah. She was a nice kid, you know."

Nick gave her a few more minutes, and when she didn't say anything more asked, "What happened tonight?"

Sara sighed. "Greg and I were called to a DB just off the Strip. It was a street kid. She'd been beaten and raped, and she was so covered in blood you could hardly see her face. We got her back to the morgue, got her cleaned up. It was that little girl. Brenda Collins. She ran away from her foster home about five months ago, been living on the streets since then."

"Any evidence?"

"Nothing conclusive, yet. We collected DNA from the rape kit, but we've got nothing to compare it to. It's just not fair. Kid had a horrible life, and then some idiot, some bastard - she was a mess, you know? She was _eleven_. I just - just makes me sick, you know? Like I should have _done_ something."

Nick looked down at her. Taking things personally was one thing, but this was something else. "Like _what_, exactly?"

"Oh, I don't _know_. But she trusted me, and I just - I _forgot_ about her."

"It's not your job to remember. Child Protection Services- " he stopped. Sara didn't have any faith in CPS, and he couldn't blame her. "It's not your fault," he said instead.

"Sure feels like it," she muttered, standing up and walking over to the window. Nick watched her back, strong and steady, as she stared out. She wasn't crying; whether that was good or bad he wasn't sure.

"You okay?"

"Wonderful," she said, turning and fixing him with a smile. He'd never seen such a fake smile.

* * *

He was surprised when she asked if she could stay, and unsurprised as he knew that the body beside his in bed was tense, and fighting sleep. Nick rolled over, and looked at her through the dim light of his bedroom. "Sara, it's okay."

She was lying on her back, staring up the ceiling. "I should go home," she said, her voice flat and resigned. In one swift movement she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

"Don't." Nick caught her arm. "I want you to stay."

"I'll just wake you up," she muttered. Nick could hear bitterness mixing with the resignation in her tone.

"I don't care. I don't want you to be by yourself."

"I'm a big girl. I can look after myself." She didn't move.

"Sara, lie down."

Nothing.

"Sara, you're being an idiot. Would you please just lie down and go to sleep?" Nick rubbed his hand over his eyes. He was in for the prospect of interrupted sleep whether Sara was with him or not, but if she was here, at least he'd worry less.

"_Fine_." Sara lay back down just as quickly as she'd sat up, and rolled over onto her stomach. "I'm here. And if I wake you up, don't blame me."

"Just go to sleep, okay?" Nick reached out a hand. Her physical presence was reassuring.

As he finally drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard her mutter, "You're lucky I love you." He was just enough awake to manage a smile.

* * *

It wasn't so much Sara's nightmares that woke him as the gradual knowledge that she was awake and upset. It wasn't a feeling he could quite put his finger on, but he blamed it on her harsh breathing and the stiffness in her body as she tried not to cry. Whatever it was, it woke him up. "_Hey_," he said, as gently as he could, trying not to startle her.

Sara was still lying on her stomach, one arm curled tightly around her pillow. Nick couldn't see her face, but he didn't need to. Her body language was enough. Nick shifted over enough so his body pressed against the length of hers, and wrapped an arm across her back.

Nightmares. It wasn't a conversation he'd ever had with Warrick or Greg or even Grissom, but he suspected everyone in this job had them. There was probably some deep psychological reason about repression of emotions on the job, about the normalisation of horror that could only be expressed in the subconscious mind.

Or whatever.

Sara probably knew, actually. She retained facts like that. Nick wasn't sure, though, that knowing what made the mind decide to torture itself would help any. Scientific reality had nothing to do with a sudden onset of terror from which the sleeping mind couldn't escape, and nothing to do with crying into a pillow, or two people trying to cope in the dark silence of a bedroom.

"Just breathe, Sara."

* * *

**TBC...**


	4. Chapter Four

**DISCLAIMER:** Yeah. Not mine.

* * *

Greg's toast was cold, but he ate it anyway. He was strangely lacking in energy, which was why he was eating toast instead of a proper meal, and why he'd stared at it so long that it was cold before it occurred to him that he was hungry.

It didn't take a genius to know that this case was getting to him, and it was less than twenty four hours old. It was that girl, that girl's body, lying in that nasty, sordid, dirty alleyway. Even after three years in the field there were images Greg couldn't erase from his mind - couldn't block out with Marilyn Manson music or DVDs or a beer or two. At times it got so bad he began to long for the sterility of the DNA lab, but Greg Sanders had never been a quitter, and never would be. He'd stuck it out this long, and the bad times always got better. There was always something - though it may only have turned up after long days - which made him realise again why he'd wanted to do this, which shot him through with an excitement that kept him riding high for a while.

Apparently the kid had a name. Brenda Collins. Sara had told him the girl's story that morning, when they'd been clocking out after their overtime. He couldn't stop himself being glad he hadn't been in the field for the Collins case - he'd felt the impact in the lab and it had been bad enough. And that girl, Brenda, Blondie, had deserved a fairytale life after what had happened to her. And instead she'd had a death that was as terrible as her life had been.

For a few moments, Greg watched the setting sun out the windows.

He left home in time to be at the lab exactly in time for the start of his shift. He wasn't surprised to note, as he clocked in, that Sara was already there - she'd clocked in about the same time as the guys from swing - after all, this was Sara, and she _knew_ the kid. Probably shouldn't have been working the case, actually, but it wasn't like there wasn't precedent for _that_ in the department. If Catherine was allowed to work a case in which her ex was accused of rape, no one was going to stop Sara investigating the death of a little girl she'd known for a day.

What Greg _was_ surprised about was that Sara had actually gone home when he had. He'd been expecting her to come up with some excuse for staying, one last thing to do, but she'd left meekly after an hour's overtime. And maybe Greg had been watching her, and had noticed that she hadn't driven off in the direction he'd been expecting - but she'd still left without even contemplating a protest.

He'd long since given up the idea of ever actually _understanding_ Sara.

He found her in the garage, crouched on the concrete floor in overalls, her hair clipped up on top of her head and a determined expression on her face. She had all the trash from the Dumpster behind which they'd found Blondie (she'd commandeered the whole thing at the scene, much to the irritation of one of the cops) spread out on sterile sheets on the floor, and Greg didn't need telling that she was processing every last bit of it. What she was hoping to find he wasn't sure, but as they'd gone over Blondie's clothes and body and there was no other evidence, Sara was probably looking for the magic make-or-break clue. "Hey, Sara."

"Hi," she replied, not taking her eyes from the Dumpster. She sounded a little vague.

"How's it going?"

"It's not. I've processed half of this stuff - nothing probative yet."

"Damn."

"Yeah. Get some overalls on and come help me with this."

The next two hours were mind-numbingly boring. Greg wanted to suggest they put on some music, but the look on Sara's face stopped him from even opening his mouth. They worked in silence, with only the odd comment or request for a particular item. Long before they'd finished Greg felt he'd be seeing close-ups of trash in his sleep, or that he'd just go mad.

But if Sara could do this, so could he.

When every single piece of trash had been processed so well that not even Sara had a case for continuing, Greg had a raging headache and major case of frustration. This case was coming up dead end after dead end; a little girl was lying in the morgue and they were no closer to finding out who'd raped and killed her.

"Now what?" Greg asked, sitting back and beginning to repack his kit.

Sara pulled off her gloves and flung them into the bin. "What's the time?"

Surprised, Greg pushed up the sleeve of the overalls and checked his watch. "Just after ten p.m."

"Good. We're going back to the scene, see who we can find to talk to who might have been around last night."

"Does Brass know about this?" Greg asked. If he was a little anxious, no one could blame him. Sara had that air of determination which meant that little things like regulations and personal safety were going to be inconsequential.

"He's meeting us there with a couple of cops. We're supposed to be there at eleven. You've got time for a coffee."

Greg had an apple and paracetamol instead, and wondered where Sara had disappeared to.

* * *

Before Greg came to Vegas, his impressions of the city had involved the Strip, girls, the Strip, girls, and - yeah. It had almost been a rude awakening to discover that Vegas was just like any other city when you got away from the Strip: either boring but nice, or the sort of edgy areas the people from the boring parts liked to think didn't exist.

This was one of those areas.

It was relatively quiet and empty when they arrived, but it wasn't long before the presence of cops and CSIs attracted people, drawn like moths to a flame. What _was_ it with people?

It turned out that a lot of people had things to say, it was just that most of them weren't at all relevant. Some woman wanted to tell him all about how the street kids couldn't be allowed, and it took all Greg's patience to stop himself from asking if she'd be willing to take some of them in. Someone talked on and on about the rape and murder of a girl in New York City. Greg nodded and promised to keep in mind, all the while knowing that, from the man's description, the two crimes were so far apart (and not just geographically) that they almost definitely had nothing to do with each other.

Sara and the cops seemed to be having the same problem. When they reconvened in a cop car after a few hours, Sara looked close to exhaustion. "Nothing. Nothing. Just time wasters, attention seekers - nothing genuine in that lot."

Brass grinned, and caught Greg's eye in the rear view mirror. "No luck, Sara?"

"You know what we need? We need to find that kid who dialled 911. I'll bet you anything they know something about what happened to Brenda. Has to have been one of the kids from that group that lives round here."

"The kids have gone to ground, Sara," Brass said. "We tried to track them down last night. Brenda probably was part of that group - and if she wasn't they would've known her - but we can't find them. They're not in the old factory we had pegged as their base. But if they pop up anywhere round the city, PD will let us know."

Greg could share in her frustration, and he hadn't even known the girl. He didn't even get as emotionally involved as Sara did (then again, nobody got as emotionally involved as Sara did), preferring to view the cases as far as possible in terms of science - but this case was bugging him too. It was Blondie and her story that was at the root of it. Her father had died for what he had done to Brenda - but he hadn't died in that knowledge. Sitting back in the cop car, clutching a styrofoam cup of bad coffee, Greg found himself wondering if James Collins had really been punished for what he'd done to his daughters. He'd had a death sentence all right, but if he'd had time to think he must have thought it was a random attack.

It occurred to Greg that if he was going to kill someone for a crime, he'd make sure they knew why they were dying.

Startled, he shook his head. Where had _that_ come from? Hell, this job was messing with his mind. All their minds.

He tried to refocus on a determination to get the guy who had done this latest, and final, thing to Blondie. If Blondie's father hadn't paid adequately, this man _would_.

* * *

**TBC...**


	5. Chapter Five

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own them, I'm not making any money from them, blah blah blah.

* * *

For the second day running, Sara slept badly. She awoke more than once with images of Brenda Collins clear in her mind and a craving for alcohol throughout her body. Each time she lay on her back in bed, trying to focus on nothing but controlling her breathing and willing away the images and the cravings.

As she lay awake she heard the sounds of traffic on the road outside somewhere at the back of her mind. The idea of normal people going about normal lives had always seemed either comforting or insulting, but right now the idea that there were hundreds of thousands of people out there with lives of their own just seemed to emphasise how very alone she was.

Going back to her own place after shift had been a defiant gesture of independence. After all, she had an apartment of her own and she was a grown woman. She didn't need someone to hold her as she slept or to worry over her every extreme emotion.

Of course, it was certainly _nice_, but -

Sara rolled over onto her stomach and gathered up one of the pillows. It was stupid that she should be so lonely and absolutely ridiculous that a simple case should be bothering her so much. She'd known Brenda Collins for all of about a day - she should have been no different to any other victim.

_Stupid_.

Sara tightened her grip on the pillow a little.

* * *

Greg was watching her a little too closely. Honestly, he was almost as bad as Nick when it came to this caring _too_ much, and being horribly obvious with it. Anyone who didn't know them would have assumed Greg was either her boyfriend or her brother. As far as Sara was concerned, she had a boyfriend who was officious enough as it was, and she didn't need another brother. Scott had a tendency to send worried emails from New York, as if she was still ten years old.

What _was_ it with the men in her life? Why did none of them believe she was capable of looking after herself?

"Sara. Greg." Brass put his head around the doorway of the room where they were laying out theories as to how Brenda had ended up in the alleyway. "We've found a woman who volunteers at a soup kitchen at the Episcopal church on Brown Street who thinks she could recognise our street kids - if we're in luck we might be able to figure out if Brenda was part of that big group."

Sara felt a thrill of excitement. "She's willing to ID them?"

Brass gave one of his half smiles. "We've got a lot of photos of missing kids to show her. You two coming?"

Sara was already on her feet. "_Yes_." Any information this woman could give them was better than the nothing they seemed to have at the moment.

* * *

Denise Ortega was a tall, solemn, tired looking woman who met Sara, Greg and Brass at the doorway of the Episcopal church's drop-in centre. The last of the people who'd come in for a free evening meal had drifted back to the streets, and a few volunteers were wiping down the long formica tables. The room smelt of chicken soup and disinfectant, and the bright lights were harsh. It was, Sara thought, a little institutional for a refuge. For a split second, she seemed to picture Brenda sitting at one of the tables.

After a few formalities, Brass dropped the folder of photos on the table. He extracted the first one and handed it to Mrs Ortega. "Do you recognise this girl?"

Mrs Ortega nodded. "That's Blondie. Her hair's grown since then, and she's lost weight - but I suppose she was always a skinny kid. I - I suppose the kid you've got is definitely her?"

Greg nodded. "DNA confirms it."

Mrs Ortega put the photo on the table and gazed at it. "Poor kid."

"Did you know her well?" Brass asked.

"I try to keep tabs on them all, but they're so defensive. They don't let people get close easily. I like - liked - her, though. Some of the kids are really rude, really abrasive, but Blondie was quiet. She'd take no crap from the others, though."

"Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead?"

"No." Mrs Ortega shook her head. "Who would want to kill a kid? Well, obviously someone did, but - no. I have no idea."

"All right." Brass opened the folder again. "These photos are from the missing person's database. They're kids aged between eight and sixteen who've disappeared from Clark County in the last few years. I want you to look at them and see if you recognise any of them."

There was silence in the long room as Mrs Ortega looked through the photographs, studying the face of each child. The volunteers had finished with the tables, and a few voices drifted in from the kitchen to the accompaniment of the sounds of dishwashing.

"No," said Mrs Ortega, finally, tucking the photos back into the folder and handing it to Brass. "None of them. Of course, they've probably changed like Blondie did, but none of them even look familiar. Their poor families."

"So... where did the kids Brenda hung out with come from?" Greg asked, looking from Brass to Sara to Mrs Ortega.

Sara shrugged. "Kids that haven't been reported missing, and kids that've come from outside of Clark County who've made it to Vegas somehow. Bright lights, excitement - they probably think it's better than small town Nevada or wherever they came from."

"Mrs Ortega, do you know where we could find these kids? We've got PD keeping an eye out for them, but they're not at the old factory and we can't find them."

Mrs Ortega shook her head. "Raf and Petey - they're the leaders - they were pretty careful about their security. We always thought they had another hideout, because everyone knows about the factory and Raf doesn't like people to know those things about his kids. They haven't been in since the night Blondie died."

"Was she with them then?"

"I wasn't here that night, but Lara mentioned they'd been in when we heard about Blondie. Lara!"

Lara was a small, red-headed woman who emerged from the kitchen with a large pot in one hand and a dishcloth in the other. According to Lara, who'd been "thinking pretty hard about it", Brenda hadn't been in with the group the night she died. "I asked Angel and the other girl where she was - there were three of them that were usually together, Blondie and Angel and another girl - she never told me her name. But I asked them, and the other girl said she didn't know, and they got their dinner. We can't chase the kids, if they don't turn up there's nothing we can do."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sara noticed Brass making a note of the name 'Angel' besides those of Raf and Petey. She sighed, feeling that it was probably going to be another dead end. Even if they knew who Angel _was_, didn't mean they were going to be able to track her down.

Sara, Brass and Greg left the drop-in center with a few precious clues and a lot more questions. Brenda hadn't gone for dinner with the other kids - why? Where had she been? Was her absence directly linked to her death? Where were the kids, and what information did they have?

It was dark and cold outside, even with the lights coming from the casinos on the Strip a few blocks away. The few paltry streetlights didn't do a lot to either lighten or cheer up the area. Sara zipped up her jacket, feeling the chill on her cheeks and watching the clouds of steam created by her breathing. It was _winter_, and Vegas got damn cold at night. Somewhere out there were kids with not enough food or clothes because there was no one to give them the care they needed, even if the kids were prepared to accept it.

There were too many kids out there in the world with no one to love them.

Brass and Greg were walking a few paces ahead of Sara, trying to figure out what 'Raf' could be short for. They'd come up with Rafael and Rafferty, and were now talking about surnames. Sara wandered along behind them, half listening to their conversation, half going over all the evidence, yet again, searching for some connection or clue she'd missed.

There was a - Sara stopped short. There were two girls standing in the shadows on the opposite side of the street, and Brass and Greg were so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn't noticed. Without even thinking, Sara ducked across the street. The girls, who'd been staring at her, didn't move as she approached them. "Hey."

The two girls were maybe thirteen, fourteen years old. One was Hispanic, a tall skinny girl with big brown eyes and a long dark braid hanging over one shoulder. The other was blonde and shorter, her hair cut crookedly shoulder length. She'd probably be beautiful in a few years with a decent haircut and some good meals. Despite the meals from the soup kitchen, both of them were clearly malnourished. "Hi," said the taller girl.

"Are you a cop?" asked the other.

"I'm a crime scene investigator." Sara glanced down the street. Brass and Greg were standing at the Denali, talking. "My name's Sara Sidle. I'm trying to find out who killed a girl named Blondie. Did you know her?"

Both girls nodded.

"Is one of you Angel?" Sara asked hastily, her heart pounding. Brass and Greg would be after her any second now, and who knew what these two girls would do then.

The blonde girl nodded. "Me." She pointed at her captain. "She's Marissa."

"Do you know who killed Blondie?"

Angel and Marissa glanced at each other. "No," said Marissa, after a few long seconds.

Sara's stomach clenched impatiently. Marissa wasn't telling the truth. "Can you tell me where you guys are hanging out at the moment. We need to talk to all of you, see if anyone knows anything about what happened to Blondie." She flicked her eyes sideways, just in time to meet Greg turning his head towards her. _Damn_. "You do know something, don't you?"

"Sara!"

_Damn_.

Angel and Marissa exchanged looks again. "Maybe we'll be at the drop-in center tomorrow night," Marissa said. "But maybe not."

Almost before Greg was at Sara's side, Angel and Marissa were disappearing down the street.

"Who're they?"

"The kids Mrs Ortega told us about," Sara said, disappointment racing through her body. One or both of them knew more than they were letting on about what had happened to Brenda. A sudden fear took hold of her - the fear that what had happened to Brenda would happen to one of them, that the next body would be Angel's or Marissa's, beaten and raped liked Brenda had been, and all the life drained out of them.

"What did they say?"

Sara hesitated. "Not much. They know more than what they told me."

"Hurry up, you two!" Brass was leaning out the driver's side of the Denali.

They waited for a car to pass, and walked back across the street.

The rest of the night was rather anti-climactic. Sara and Greg spent it in one of the labs, searching the databases for missing kids who could have been in Brenda's group. They began with all the variants they could on the name Angel - Angel, Angela, Angelica, Angelina, and searched outwards from Las Vegas and then across the state. One Angela, who was too old, and an Angelica, who was half-Chinese, which the girl on the street clearly wasn't. Three possible Marissas - one from Laughlin, one from Reno, one from Carson City. Raf and Petey were harder, but they eventually managed to compile a list of nine possibilities for Raf, and eleven for Petey.

Sara was grateful to have something to do, as mindnumbingly boring as it was. More than that, it was likely to be useless, at least as far as finding Brenda's killer went. She wasn't going to deny the niggling thought in the back of her head that was planning to figure out how to reunite Angel and Marissa with their families, or at least to get them proper care. The horrifying possibility that one of them would end up like Brenda was already playing itself out in her mind.

After all, like Brenda, they were still just kids.

* * *

When her shift was over, Sara found herself on Nick's doorstep picking out the key to his door on her keyring. She didn't quite remember making the decision to go there, but she put the key in the lock before she could have second thoughts.

**TBC...**


	6. Chapter Six

**DISCLAIMER: **Not mine, blah blah blah.

* * *

The Brown Street Episcopal Church's drop-in centre had served a steady queue of the homeless. Sara, standing in the far corner, watched everyone who came in the door. Most of them were adults. Some wore ragged, dirty clothes typical of most street people Sara had had contact with; others wore cleaner, smarter, if sometimes ill-fitting clothes. 

It was quiet in the centre, despite the music playing softly in the background. The volunteers serving kept up a steady flow of talk; sometimes their patrons responded, sometimes not. Some of those at the tables talked quietly; others remained in an almost defensive silence.

There was, as yet, no sign of Angel and Marissa. Every time someone new came through the door, Sara's nervousness increased a little, and then something seemed to drop sharply into the pit of her stomach as it proved not to be either of the girls. Nick had insisted she not depend too much on them showing up, and that was logical: after all, they'd only said maybe. But all Nick's lectures couldn't quell the desperate need to understand what had happened to Brenda, or the desire to discover the stories of these two, or the duty she felt to protect them.

Where _were_ they?

Nick always had lectures for her. Do this, don't do this, why on _earth_ do you feel like that? He was a better listener than any of her past boyfriends had been, but he had the male compulsion to fix everything taken to the extreme. Everything could be fixed, everything could be made better, except for the private nightmares that both of them carried around. You just keep trying, Nick, she often thought, listening to him expand on ways to make this, that, or the other thing _better_. Half the time he didn't even have any conception of what better might be.

He was Mr Idealistic. She'd have had to pity him if she hadn't known that, deep inside him, he realised the futility of his attempts to fix things. He didn't truly believe in happy endings either.

Still no sign of the girls.

It would be nice if there could be a happy ending for Angel and Marissa. Nice, but unlikely - but that didn't mean she'd leave them to their fate on the streets without a fight. Working in forensics she'd seen the aftermath of malnutrition, drugs, alcohol, rape, beatings like that which had been inflicted on Brenda Collins. There was probably a long list of things that Angel and Marissa could be marked off as victims of. Victims of drugs and alcohol and rape, most likely, and probably even of the system. Brenda had run away from her foster home, and Sara could guess instinctively at the reasons. It wasn't necessarily that Brenda had thought the streets would have been better than her current placement. It was that she'd have control over her own life. She could live where she wanted, eat and sleep when she wanted, form her own family instead of having one forced on her.

I _know_, Brenda. I know, and I let you go into that situation.

Two girls had come in. Sara swallowed. It was them - Angel and Marissa. She stepped forward a little, and Marissa met her eye as she and Angel received their food.

Anxiously, Sara followed them over to the seats they chose at the end of a long table and sat down opposite them. "Hi. I'm glad you guys came tonight."

Marissa shrugged. "We were hungry."

Angel, who was tearing up her bread roll and dropping the pieces into her vegetable soup, glanced sideways at her. "Yeah," she said shortly.

"So." Sara cast around for some neutral topic of conversation. She'd never been good at this. "Are you two okay?"

Marissa thought about it. "Sure." She raised her spoon to her mouth and swallowed.

"Okay. Stupid question. Look. I want to find out what happened to Brenda - Blondie. Can you help me?"

"Why?" Angel asked.

Something turned over in Sara's stomach. "_Why?_"

"Yeah. Why do you want to know who killed Blondie?"

The reasons all seemed blatantly obvious to Sara, but she racked her brains for something that would satisfy the girls. "Because she doesn't deserve to be dead. And I want to make sure the person who hurt her is locked up so he can't do anything to anyone else."

"Okay," said Angel, shrugging, popping the last bit of bread roll into her mouth.

"What can you tell me about Blondie?" Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "When did you meet her?"

Angel and Marissa glanced at each other. "Few months ago, I guess. She just started hanging round us, and Raf and Petey liked her so she stayed," Marissa answered.

"Did everyone like her?"

"There's not a lot of liking on the streets. There's just living," Marissa said flatly.

Sara considered this, and rephrased the question. "Okay, is there anyone who you can think of who really disliked her, who might have wanted to hurt her?"

"Yeah. Like, most of Las Vegas really dislikes street kids. We're dirty and we smell bad and we ain't what Vegas is meant to be. Most of them don't care about one less street kid," said Marissa.

"I care."

"That's what they all say," Angel retorted.

"I _do_ care. Look. I knew Blondie a long time ago. And I was in the foster system once. I know what's it like to lose your family, to be alone, to have no say on your life."

"I ain't a foster kid."

"I was," Angel said. "It sucked. So I left. Why didn't you?"

"I did, but I was old enough to be emancipated, so I went down that route. Look. I may care, but I'm not stupid. What do you know about Blondie's death that you're not telling me?"

Marissa and Angel exchanged glances again. "There's this man," Angel said finally. "I don't know what his name is. But he likes girls. Blonde girls. Like Blondie."

Sara thought over the implications of this, and felt sick. "And you?"

"Sure. I got blonde hair."

"So..." Sara took a deep breath, looked down at the table, and then back up at Angel. "What did this man do?"

"He just came round sometimes, looking for blonde girls. He gave money to the ones who went with him. Twenty dollars. And sometimes he'd buy me McDonalds."

"Where did you go with him?" Sara asked, trying to conceal her revolt.

"Just somewhere in his car. And no, I don't know what sort of car, just it's blue. I know nothing 'bout cars."

"_Anyway_," said Marissa. "He's a creepy bastard. And he really liked Blondie. And then last time he came Blondie wouldn't go with him. Raf wouldn't let her, he said she was his girl and she wasn't going with any other men."

"And I said I'd go. Twenty dollars, you know, might as well get paid for it. Only he said if he couldn't have Blondie he wasn't having any of us, and he got real pissed off and left."

"When was this?"

"I dunno. Few days ago. Before Blondie died."

"So what happened the night Blondie died?" Sara felt sick. She'd been well aware of the realities of street life, but to hear this kid discuss it all so calmly hit her as hard as the details did. "I heard you all came in for dinner and Blondie wasn't with you."

"I dunno where she was. She just went off in the afternoon with Raf and he came back without her. Asked where she was, but he didn't say. And then when we were walking home we found her body. And Angel was nearly sick."

"Wasn't the only one," Angel said sullenly.

"I called the cops. Pissed Raf and Petey off, but - " Suddenly, Marissa's face softened noticeably. "She was our friend, I guess. And she was a nice kid."

"I need to talk to Raf."

The girls looked at each other. "He won't talk to you. He hates cops. He's got a knife."

"Was he sleeping with Blondie?"

Marissa laughed. "We all sleep with each other. No nice little bedrooms. But he was having sex with her."

The last of the patrons of the soup kitchen were beginning to leave. A woman who Sara hadn't seen before came around and collected the girls' plates. "We've gotta go," Angel said.

"Look. What are your real names?"

"These are our real names, lady. They're the only ones that count." The girls stood up.

Sara fought down a rising surge of panic. She wasn't going to lose them. Not now. "Where can I find you? Where will you be? You know, if you need anything, I can bring it."

"You cops all know where we live. Come on, Angel. Nice talking," said Marissa, with the barest hint of sincerity.

Sara watched them leave, went to the bathroom, and threw up.

* * *

Say what she would about Nick - about his fussing, his lecturing, his sometimes strange way of viewing the world - at least when he held her even the worst things seemed bearable for a time.

* * *

**TBC...**


	7. Chapter 7

**DISCLAIMER: **Nothing that you recognise belongs to me.

* * *

Nick woke alone in bed. He remembered even before he was fully awake that Sara had definitely been there when he'd fallen asleep. She'd been crying, and he'd been holding her and trying to make it all go away and just feeling absolutely, completely, useless. She'd seemed so lost, these few days, and when she got lost she was completely erratic. Nick liked knowing where Sara was, because it meant she probably wasn't doing something stupid.

He stretched out a hand to where she'd been. Cold.

Nick usually liked to take a few minutes to wake up properly. He liked lying in bed, adjusting his mind, planning his "day". This time he skipped that, forced himself straight into awake-and-thinking mode, and got up.

Sara was sitting at the dining table with her head pillowed on one arm. A couple of pieces of paper were sticking out from underneath her, covered in what looked like her own peculiar brand of shorthand. Lying on top of them was a pen, the end of which Nick was fairly sure hadn't been chewed the last time he saw it. A coffee mug lay on its side, and the last dregs of coffee had dripped onto the table.

Nick righted the mug and looked carefully at Sara. She was clearly fast asleep - had she been dozing, she'd have sat bolt upright the second he came in and pretended that she was fine, that she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.

She'd have pretended that she wasn't obsessed with the Brenda Collins case, that the "BrCl" which appeared more often than anything else on her pieces of paper didn't stand for Brenda Collins.

But Nick knew her.

So he watched her, just for a few moments. Half of him wanted to pick up her up, make her hot chocolate, take her to bed and tuck her in and whisper sweet nothings to her until she fell asleep.

The part of himself that he didn't particularly like wanted to leave her to her own devices, and to run off to find his own form of oblivion.

But Nick Stokes didn't do things like that.

He took the middle road, the sensible, average, respectable path. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Sara. Wake up." When she stirred and blinked and looked up at him with bleary eyes, he picked up her coffee mug and said, "I'll make you some fresh coffee."

* * *

"You with me, man?"

Nick had the feeling Warrick had asked him the question more than once. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't sleep well."

"Everything okay with you?"

Not for the first time, Nick had the desire to just tell Warrick everything. How he'd slept with Sara for the first time nearly a year ago, after a case he'd worked, unusually, with her, because swing shift had been short handed. It had been one of those nightmare cases - child abuse, the sort of thing they both loathed. When the case was over, when they'd got justice for little Amelia Harvey, they'd gone out for a drink and one drink became several, and next thing he knew he was kissing her, and she tasted like beer and peanuts and he felt like he could get drunk on Sara Sidle faster than he could on alcohol. He took her home, and her skin was warm and smooth under his hands and she was just as desperate, just as eager as he was.

He wondered what Warrick would say, if Nick said he'd been sleeping with Sara for almost a year, and that he loved her in a way he didn't understand and couldn't explain to anyone else.

If he said all that, then he could tell Warrick how cut up Sara was over the Brenda Collins case, how she wasn't eating properly, how she wouldn't talk about what was bothering her but just wanted to be held. Maybe he could even tell Warrick how much it bothered him and how scared he was for her.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."

At least it was a slow shift.

* * *

"Nick."

Nick had been on his way out to the parking lot. His shift, after interminably long hours, was over, and he was going to make waffles, just in case Sara turned up for breakfast. Hearing his name he turned and saw Greg Sanders in the door of the lab. "Hey Greg."

"You and Sara are friends, right?"

Nick stared at Greg.

"Well, can you make her see sense?"

Nick considered this. "Probably not," he said, aware that Greg looked nervous. "What's she up to now?"

"You know we're working the Brenda Collins murder?"

"Yes." He _definitely_ knew they were working the Brenda Collins murder.

"Well, Sara met these two homeless girls who were friends of Brenda's. She thinks they've got some information about Brenda's death that they're not giving her, and she wants to go to that old factory where the homeless kids hang out. At night. By herself. And, I don't know, it just seems really stupid to me. I told her that, and now she's pissed off at me and won't listen to anything I say."

Nick sighed. At least it wasn't going to be night again for a while - maybe long enough to hammer the fact that this was an idiotic idea into her head, at least long enough to track her down and glue himself to her side to stop her doing anything stupid. "Thanks, Greg. I'll talk to her."

"Rather you than me."

Nick managed a smile. "I'm used to Sara's moods."

"Rather you than me," Greg said again.

* * *

Nick wasn't surprised when she didn't turn up at his place. He also wasn't surprised when she answered neither her home phone nor her cell, and didn't return his calls.

He wasn't surprised - but he was worried, frustrated, and angry. Sometimes it seemed like he was putting everything he had into Sara, and she took whatever she wanted and ran. He wondered, occasionally, as he lay awake in bed, what would happen if he started being like Sara. They'd both probably self-destruct.

Because he was Nick Stokes, he didn't give up on her. He went over to her apartment, let himself in, and looked around. Nothing. If she'd been there recently, it wasn't obvious. He checked parks and casinos, bars and cafes all over the city. He went to the Episcopalian church's drop-in centre and asked if they'd seen Sara. He sauntered past the old factory that was supposed to be home to the street kids.

Nothing.

About one thirty pm, when he should have been asleep in bed, Nick found himself in a dingy little bar somewhere off the Strip, nursing a glass of beer. If he wasn't careful, he _was_ going to turn into Sara, depending on alcohol to numb the pain. Maybe it'd be easier.

Maybe it'd hurt her just as much as she was hurting him, right now.

Logic told him that she was off somewhere being Sara, so wrapped up in whatever was going on in her head that she couldn't think straight, wasn't thinking about him or anything other than solving Brenda Collins's murder and probably rescuing those two girls into the bargain. It was unlikely she was hurt, or in hospital, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere, but -

Nick finished off his glass. She was fine. She had to be fine. She was just being Sara, beautiful hopeless Sara who could be so damn selfish sometimes.

He didn't say no when the bartender offered him a refill.

While his glass was being refilled, Nick pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He open the phone book and scrolled right down to the last name on the list: _Warrick_. He stared at it; black letters highlighted against a glowing yellow background. He could push call right now and talk to Warrick, tell him the whole story, talk to someone human, someone who'd listen, someone who cared. Someone who'd tell him straight up that he was a stupid idiot.

But he wouldn't. Not yet.

He slapped some cash down on the bar and left before he could be tempted by his second beer.

* * *

He found Sara at Diablo Canyon, surprisingly enough. He'd walked out of the bar and just started driving, pretending he wasn't going out to the desert until it was too late to deny it. He liked the harsh landscape of Diablo Canyon: he was in a mood for seeing the unremitting cruelty of nature, the stark sand, the rocks, the wilderness.

Sara was out there, sitting in her Denali, staring into space.

Nick swallowed the urge to punch something (not Sara, never Sara), or shout at her. He swallowed his emotions, tried to make his voice level, and opened the passenger's side door.

He was a little gratified to see that Sara jumped. "Nick! What are you doing out here?"

He was tempted to say _looking for you_. "Thinking."

"Oh."

"What the hell are you playing at, Sara?" He'd expected his voice to be angry, but it was more tired, weary, old.

"What do you mean?" She had the grace to look, at least, a little guilty.

Nick pulled her cell phone from the glove box where she always kept it. "Six missed calls, Sara. All from me. I called you at home, six times. I went round there. I've searched the city for you. I just wish you'd tell me when you're going to disappear."

Sara sighed, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry, okay? I just had to get away."

"Just - I _worry_ about you, Sara."

"You don't trust me."

"No. I don't." Nick shook his head. "You're not trustworthy, that's _why_. Would you like to tell me what you're planning on doing tonight?"

Sara glared at him. "You've been talking to Greg. You don't need to _check up on me_, Nick!"

"Greg came looking for me, actually, because he's just as worried about you as I am. Can't you tell when people care about you?" It probably wasn't staring out at the desert that was making Nick's eyes water. "Tell me what you're going to do tonight."

"I'm just going to go talk to a couple of Brenda's friends. That's it."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not."

Nick drew a deep breath. "If you don't take me with you, I'll go to Grissom and Ecklie and the Sheriff and tell them that you're unfit to work at the moment." As he spoke, he watched her face. Didn't she _realise_ that this was hurting him just as much as it was hurting her?

"You wouldn't."

"I would, Sara, because you're _scaring_ me, okay? You're not acting sensibly or rationally or even professionally. You shouldn't even be working this damn case. I'm not asking you not to go, I am just asking you to take me with you."

They watched each other in silence. "_Fine,_" Sara said, eventually. "Fine. If it'll get you off my back, you can come."

**TBC...**


	8. Chapter 8

**DISCLAIMER:** They're not mine and I'm making nothing from them. You know that, I know that, the man in the moon knows that.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **Uh, sorry for the rather large delay in getting this done. This is for Anushka, who's been more patient that I deserve.

* * *

"How do you know they're even going to be here?"

Sara shook her head. She was starting to wish she hadn't agreed to let Nick tag along. When she got her hands on Greg - he needed to see that she was old enough to look after herself and definitely didn't need him interfering. It was sweet, sure, but getting Nick on her case had made what she was going to do so much more difficult. It had been stupid to tell Greg what she was planning, but they'd been discussing next steps for the case and it had just slipped out.

"_Sara_," Nick persisted, drumming his fingers on his knee. "How do you this isn't pointless? You said the kids disappeared after Brenda's body was found. What makes you think they're going to be back at the factory tonight?"

Sara shrugged, carefully parking the Denali under a street lamp. "Something Marissa said, that's all. She said we all knew where they'd be. I think she and Angel have still got more information about who killed Brenda."

"And?"

"And..." Sara pulled the keys out of the ignition and grabbed a bag of food she'd brought for the kids. "And I want to help them. Is that such a crime?"

"No, but surely there are better ways - "

"Nick, if you're coming with me, then _shut up_." Getting out of the Denali, she could almost feel him stiffen. Hastily, she promised herself that when this was all over she'd make it up to him. Dinner, a movie - but right now he was getting on her nerves. She needed his support rather than his worrying. He really wasn't helping matters, talking non-stop about what a bad idea this was and had she thought of this? That? The other thing?

"Fine." Nick got out and slammed the door shut. "But for the record - "

"_Shut up_." Sara turned and started walking towards the factory. She knew he'd follow, and, dammit, she loved him for that.

This street was always quiet. It was a run-down old industrial area, with very little traffic during the day and even less at nights. Good place to live if you were a bunch of kids trying to keep clear of a system that would put control of your life into the hands of faceless authorities. The police had known they were here and they'd done - what? Well, that was another thing for her list of things to do when this was over.

Sara shook her head. Double standard. She knew why the kids didn't want to be at home or why they didn't want to be in foster care, yet she thought the police should be doing something about them. The only thing that could be done was home or foster care. But when the alternative was little girls selling their bodies and talking about it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world -

"We don't have to do this," whispered Nick, behind her. He'd probably misinterpreted her head shake.

"I do."

"Then so do I."

"God, Nick - " Sara stopped outside the street entrance to the factory, and swallowed. "You do know I love you." A weight of some sort lifted itself from her stomach. Why had she said that? She was going crazy. First she was angry with him, then she loved him, and why was she worrying about this now? "Let's go."

Nick nodded and rested one hand, just for a second, on his right hip. She could see the outline of the gun he'd insisted on wearing. Strangely enough, it was reassuring, but Sara couldn't think of any reason why they'd need a gun. Just going to talk to Angel and Marissa on their turf, nothing scary, nothing to worry about.

Nick pushed the door open and stepped inside. Sara took a deep breath and followed him.

The abandoned factory lay silent and almost, in a strange way, expectant. Hopeful, maybe.

Definitely time for another session with her therapist - as usual, when this was all over.

Most of the machinery that had once lived on the ground floor was long gone. A few machines, probably broken and worthless, had been pushed into a corner where the dim light of the moon and street lamps coming in the windows caused them to cast grotesque, monstrous shadows across the concrete floor. A few darker patches - oil stains - marked places where machines had once stood.

There was definitely evidence of human habitation here. The room was littered with old newspapers, empty beer cans and bottles, a variety of trash, an old, ragged blanket. What there wasn't, in immediate sight, was kids.

"Upstairs?" said Nick, quietly, indicating towards the concrete stairs that ran up from where they stood.

"Offices," Sara nodded. "Yeah." Nick was already moving towards the stairs. Sara grabbed his arm. "I'll go first."

"I should."

"Look, you don't need to protect me, OK? Besides, Angel and Marissa know me. And a woman is less threatening than a man."

Nick shrugged. "Have it your way, but I'm right behind you."

It seemed to take an eternity to walk up those stairs. Afterwards, Sara always remembered it as a defining moment, a sort of Rubicon. As if by walking up those stairs she set a chain of events irrevocably in motion.

Maybe it was her imagination, but she seemed to hear voices falling silent behind the door as she reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Gathering her courage - and she hadn't been at all scared before, so why the hell was she scared now? - Sara knocked on the door. "An - Angel? Marissa?"

Nothing.

They had to be there.

Sara took hold of the door handle - it was cool and smooth and felt, for some reason, out of place - and opened the door. After the few seconds it took her eyes to adjust to the darker room, she saw Angel and Marissa sitting side by side with their backs against the wall, a blanket over their legs. There was a pile of things in the corner - more blankets, more newspapers, clothes, food - and two more doors opening off the room. "Hey."

"I didn't think you'd come," Marissa said, almost without emotion.

"Well, I did." Sara stepped into the room and beckoned Nick in after her, watching the girls' reactions carefully. "This is Nick Stokes. He's a CSI, like me. He worked Brenda's case the first time, back when her family was murdered. Nick, this is Angel and Marissa."

Nick nodded and smiled at each of the girls, who just looked rather wary. Sara sighed. She couldn't blame them, really. "Can we sit down?"

Angel nodded.

"Sure," said Marissa.

Sara sat down gingerly, Nick beside her. "I brought you some food," she said, passing the bag over.

Marissa looked inside and smiled. "Bribery," she said. "Thanks."

"I'm not bribing you, I'm just - "

"Trying to help. Yeah, yeah, we know." Marissa put the bag down next to her.

"So," said Sara, awkwardly, trying to make some sort of conversation. "Is there anything else you guys need? Want? I can bring it for you, you know - "

"We're fine," Marissa said quickly. "We're used to looking after ourselves."

"Yeah. I bet you are." Sara fished around for something else to say. "Where are the others?"

Angel glanced sideways at Marissa for a split second and then back at Sara. "I don't know."

Sara was fairly sure she did. "I'd still like to talk to Raf, you know," she said. "He was the last person to see Brenda alive. Even if he can tell us where the last place was he saw her, what time - it might help us figure out who killed her."

"He won't talk to you. I told you that," Marissa said.

"I know. I know. Look, maybe you could find out, let me know?"

"He won't talk about Blondie," Angel shrugged, fiddling with the worn edge of the blanket.

"Look - "

Something - a noise, an instinct born of years living amid violence - made Sara stop talking as an old, but not quite forgotten feeling seized her around the heart.

There was a second of silence, of normality, and then one of the doors burst open and a few kids in dark clothes rushed into the room. Angel and Marissa lunged sideways as Nick grabbed Sara's arm.

She'd thought this life was over.

There was screaming. That was what she remembered. Screaming. Her voice, Nick's, a few other voices. Fear and anger and pain, words, sounds - she couldn't decipher anything, couldn't figure out what was going on, but there was pain and blood - hers? Blood on her hands, it had to be hers, or maybe it was Nick's -

And then there was a gunshot and Nick's voice, louder than the rest. He couldn't have shot one of the kids, not Nick, they were all still moving - and there was more shouting and she was fighting one of them off - he had a knife - she'd never been sliced with a knife before -

Why was she so detached? She was almost calm, yet there were knives and Nick's gun and she was bleeding and this shouldn't have been happening like this -

It was her childhood all over again.

Nick fired his gun again, and this time there was a cry of pain from one of the boys and then, without them even seeming to communicate, they were streaming out the door and down the stairs and a dark, terrible silence remained in the room.

"Honey?" Nick's voice, shaking, scared. She should have listened to him, shouldn't have come - "Sara, you're bleeding - _Sara_!"

No no no no no - two bodies, she knew bodies, knew what bodies look like and this was death - two bodies, skinny, one blonde haired one dark.

Sara crawled across the floor, feeling blood under her hands, blood that could be anyone's. Angel and Marissa were bloodied, still, unmoving, dead.

Sara took Angel's hand and sat there, aware only of their bodies and of Nick, his back against the far wall, calling for police and paramedics.

This wasn't how it was meant to happen.

* * *

**TBC...**


	9. Chapter Nine

**DISCLAIMER:** They're still not mine, unfortunately.

* * *

The first thing Warrick thought was that Nick looked guilty. Not mildly guilty, or guilty in a self-satisfied, cat who got the cream kind of way, but the guilt of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Or the deaths of two young girls.

"Hey man," he said, entirely inadequately. What did you say? He thought Nick had been an absolutely stupid idiot, and so, for that matter, had Sara. Warrick wasn't entirely blind and he'd had a number of suspicions about what Nick's relationship with Sara actually was, and this just added more fuel to the fire. Whatever Nick had done, he'd done because of Sara, and of that Warrick was certain. It was Sara's case. It was Sara that Greg was worried about. It was always Sara, it seemed.

Well, whatever it is, he was going to find out. He was sick of covering for Nick, smoothing over little lapses - things Nick said that didn't quite make sense, actions that weren't quite consistent - all things that seemed to relate, somehow, back to Sara. And he was sick of not knowing, because he thought he and Nick were friends and friends shared little issues like girlfriends.

All that, and he was worried about Nick as well, not least because he happened to be sitting in a cubicle in the emergency room covered in blood.

"Hey," said Nick, dully, a few too many seconds after Warrick's greeting. "Grissom send you?"

"I would have come anyway."

"Is he angry?"

Warrick drew a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. "He's Grissom."

Nick shrugged. "Yeah."

Warrick was on the verge of asking for an explanation when a nurse came bustling in. "Now, Mr - ?"

"Stokes."

"Stokes. Let's get you cleaned up."

Warrick took a step back as the highly efficient nurse cleaned the blood off Nick, revealing a deep cut on his right cheek, one on his left forearm, and several minor ones on his arms and torso. "What did that?" he asked. "Nick?"

"Knife." Nick winced.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence as Nick was stitched up. Nick didn't seem to be in the mood for talking, and Warrick was reluctant to discuss an open investigation in front of the nurse. The only thing Nick said was to ask where Sara was.

"She's here," said Warrick. "Somewhere. I don't know where. She okay?"

Nick shrugged, earning himself a reprimand from the nurse.

There was further silence until the nurse finished stitching the worst of Nick's wounds. "I've been told you can't be discharged until the police are ready for you," the nurse said, finally and calmly, as if she said this to patients on a regular basis.

Nick seemed to stiffen slightly at the word "police". Warrick couldn't blame him; personally, he felt his heart jump crazily at the word. This was all wrong. They were familiar with the cops, sure, but from the other side. Nick had probably never had a parking ticket in his life, and now the cops wanted to talk to him in connection with the deaths of two girls.

Warrick's world seemed to have shifted unexpectedly and unnaturally on its axis. Sara was on the borderline of a lot of things, especially in the last few years, and she barely surprised Warrick any more. But Nick - Nick had had his share of problems, but he'd always been responsible, reliable, always been _there_, a solid, (usually) sane presence. "You doing okay?" he asked.

"Sure."

"What happened, man?"

Nick shrugged, stared at the wall. "Sara wanted to talk to these two girls about Brenda Collins' death. And she was just worried about them. And then these other kids came out of nowhere, and they had a knife, and - I don't really know what happened. It was dark and people were screaming - Sara was screaming, the girls were screaming - and it all just happened too fast. I had to shoot - I think I hit a kid the second time. I didn't mean to, Warrick."

Warrick blinked. Even shooting a kid in self-defense was way wrong in Nick's moral code. "You were doing what you had to do. You were protecting yourself and Sara, too."

"The kids took off when I started shooting," Nick said, dully. At the same time his voice was full of emotion and empty of it. "And there were two bodies and Sara was bleeding and... thought I was dreaming, you know?"

"Yeah."

Nick removed his gaze from the wall and looked down at his twisting hands.

"What's up with you and Sara, man?"

Nick shrugged, yet again. "She's Sara."

"I noticed that, but what's going on?"

"We're..." Nick hesitated, shrugged again.

Warrick wondered crazily if Nick's shoulders would ever stay put after today. "Well, how long?" he asked.

"Nearly a year. It's complicated."

It was what Warrick had expected. "And you never told me."

"Like I said, it's complicated."

Maybe it was a good thing that two uniformed cops arrived then. They were vaguely familiar to Warrick, but not ones he, and presumably Nick, had had a lot to do with. The choice was probably deliberate.

Nick seemed almost relieved to see the police, and more than willing to accompany them down to PD. Nick was the type who managed to have a guilty conscience when he'd done nothing wrong. He was probably, in some strange way, looking forward to taking the blame for everything he'd done wrong this time - and probably for a lot of things that hadn't been his fault at all. Warrick sighed, and followed them out of the cubicle in silence, and watched as Nick left with the cops.

The police had obviously managed to round up some of the kids who'd been involved with the thing at the factory. One boy had a fresh looking bandage on his arm, a few had smaller cuts and scrapes. The cops were talking to them in a corner.

Warrick found himself hovering anxiously about, a situation which felt incredibly uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to do, and that felt wrong when the world was upside down. Sara was probably still here, and Catherine, he supposed. If he'd been babysitting Nick, keeping an eye on Sara was probably Catherine's job. He just didn't know where they were, and he doubted that Sara wanted to see him anyway.

He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see Sara, either.

After a few minutes of watching the parade of people, he was approached by a cop. "Warrick Brown, CSI?"

"Yeah."

"I'm supposed to ask you to process these kids when we're done. We can take them down to PD for you."

Warrick nodded. "Yeah. Thanks." That he could do. Meanwhile, he'd wait. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts.

His moments of peace didn't last long, but the sound of Catherine's voice was a pleasant interruption. "Hey," she said, and Warrick opened his eyes. "Fancy seeing you here."

Seeing Catherine made it seemed like the world was moving, however slowly, back towards normality. He smiled, and Catherine smiled back. "Yeah. Fancy that."

Catherine, it transpired, was looking for Nick, so Warrick filled her in on the situation. "We're covering our backs, huh? This is such a mess. Whole thing's going to go to hell," Catherine said, rubbing her forehead. Warrick guessed she was thinking about media, and Internal Affairs, and the sheriff, and Grissom, and so many other things.

"Yup," he agreed, unable to think of anything more helpful to say.

"How's Nick?" Catherine asked.

"He's got twelve stitches."

"Sara's probably got more."

Warrick tried to imagine what Sara looked like. Nick had looked bad enough. He sighed. "Shit. This is a disaster."

Catherine nodded, the expression in her eyes half-sympathetic. "Tell me about it. I don't know how the hell Nick could possibly have been so stupid."

"I notice you're not asking that about Sara," Warrick said, slowly. He couldn't blame her, really, because this whole thing seemed to be Sara's fault. "How is she?"

Catherine sighed. "Oh, who _knows_?"

"Shit," said Warrick again. He was having trouble finding anything useful to say.

"Well, I suppose I get to tell Sara she can't see Nick yet." Catherine seemed entirely unthrilled with the prospect.

"Rather you than me."

"Ha. Thanks. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah. See ya," said Warrick, finding another smile from somewhere. He watched Catherine head back to wherever the nurses had Sara, and leaned back against the wall, waiting.

* * *

There were no surprises among the kids when Warrick processed them. The fingerprints of one boy, who refused to give a name other than "Raf", matched the prints on the bloodied knife Grissom and Greg had found at the factory. Another of the boys, Petey, was equally reluctant to give his real name, but he did have a bullet wound through his upper left arm. Grissom and Greg had found the bullet too, and it matched Nick's gun, to no-one's surprise.

Raf was remanded in custody for the murders of the two girls and assaulting Nick and Sara. Petey was released into a secure youth facility to have his wound taken care of. The rest of the kids that had been rounded up were divided into several group homes, and around four a.m. the coroner brought in the bodies of the two girls.

Warrick didn't go to see the bodies. He sat in the break room and drummed restless fingers on the table, waiting for Catherine, waiting for news about Nick, news about Sara, waiting for Grissom and Greg to return from the crime scene. He stared at the table when Ecklie walked past and gave the briefest, most non-committal answers he could, and was grateful he didn't have to talk to the press.

* * *

**TBC...**


	10. Chapter 10

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine, as always.

* * *

Nick knew that the bodies of two young girls were lying on metal slabs in the morgue, near where Brenda Collins was lying in a drawer, now just a body waiting to be claimed.

Bodies.

Death.

Blood.

Screaming.

Darkness.

It felt like nightmares, echoing in his head.

The police told him about the boy he shot. His name was Petey - no last name, no real name - and he was one of the leaders of that little gang, that little family, of kids. It was a clean shot, which was something, and it would heal - but Nick Stokes had still shot a kid.

It was dark in the interrogation room. How had he never noticed it before? It was intimidating, being on this side of the table, and strangely sickening. And if he didn't feel like a criminal before he sure as hell felt like one now, with two cops coming at him from both sides trying to get him to confess to everything in the world. All he did was follow Sara to that factory and shoot a kid - in self defense, sure, but he _shot_ him, he _shot_ a kid -

But he didn't commit every damn crime in the universe, which was what it felt like, and it was like the world was caving in on itself. Despite it all Nick had always thought that if you behaved yourself things would come out okay. Good boys looked after the people they loved and minded their own business and the world was supposed to pass them by and let them live happily ever after.

He should have stopped believing in fairytales long ago, but he'd always kept believing, always kept hoping, because then maybe there'd be a princess and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What he got was Sara, and he loved her so much it hurt and maybe she was _his_ princess, and his pot of gold was a job that gave him nightmares and barely paid him enough to keep his bills covered.

Everything it came back to was the dead girls, and Sara. Someone called Rafael had killed the girls, they said, but they wanted to know what Nick and Sara had been doing in the old factory in the first place. Nick said, over and over again, that they were just trying to find out who had killed Brenda Collins, and yes it was against regulations and he'd known that all along, but they were just trying to _help_ -

Over and over and over again.

They let him go eventually, of course. He wasn't being charged with anything (although there seemed to be an implicit hint of "yet" in the air) but he was suspended from work pending further investigation and had to surrender his passport and wasn't allowed to leave town.

It wasn't as if there was anywhere he could go.

"Where's Sara?" he asked.

Still in interrogation, they said.

Sara, he thought; Sara who pretended to be so brave and strong but yet was like icecream inside -

Nick shook his head, stuck inside his own nightmares.

Warrick was, probably inevitably, waiting for him, looking strangely out of place in the corridor. "Want me to drive you home?"

Nick didn't, actually, but he wasn't sure he could stop his hands shaking long enough to drive safely home. "Whatever."

They drove back to Nick's in silence. Nick found he could only bear it because Warrick wasn't saying anything, wasn't asking any more questions about Sara or about the kids or why Nick had done what he had. He supposed that was one of Warrick's best traits, that you could count on him not to say anything when things were really bad. "Do you need anything?" Warrick asked, words finally falling into the silence, as they pulled into the driveway of Nick's condo.

"No." Nick swallowed. "No, I'm fine."

"You need anything, you call me."

"Sure," Nick said, lying blatantly. He'd become better at that. Couldn't lie to Sara, couldn't lie to Grissom - but he could lie to anyone else and hardly care about it. Well, he'd come a long way from that good little Texan boy.

"And you'll be okay?"

"Sure," Nick lied again. _Okay_ probably meant not having too much to drink, not sitting up for hours watching sports mindlessly on television, not waiting for and worrying about Sara. But Warrick's definition of okay and Nick's definition of okay were two different things, and in Nick's world being okay meant that you weren't breaking down. Anything else was a bonus.

"I'll see you, then," Warrick said, and it was clear that he knew not to believe a word Nick said. For a moment Nick felt uneasy, even disloyal, but the moment passed. This was about him and Sara and them getting through this however they could, and all the others - Warrick, Catherine, Grissom - well, it had nothing to do with them. They were on the outside, looking in, with no idea what things were like on the inside. No idea what it meant to be Nick.

"Thanks," he said, almost automatically. "Guess I'll see you soon. I don't know when I'll be allowed back to work."

"Yeah. See you, Nick."

"Bye." Nick began the strangely long walk up to his front door, noting that Warrick didn't drive away until he was safely inside.

Just as the interrogation room felt different, so did home. It seemed unfamiliar somehow, as if someone had come along and rearranged all Nick's things, giving them a different quality. Kicking off his shoes he grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat down on the sofa with it, trying to find something halfway decent to watch. He wasn't supposed to keep alcohol in the house, because of Sara, but she had plenty of alcohol herself anyway. He liked to believe she was over her drinking thing, but knew damn well she wasn't. He just let her do it anyway, because he couldn't stop her without making her angry, and because when she was drunk and miserable she'd lie with her head in his lap and let him stroke her hair.

He sat there until Sara turned up. As she came in, looking worse than he felt, he realised he'd just known she'd come here instead of going home. It was the only thing that made sense. She didn't say anything, just went straight to the fridge and helped herself to a beer, then came back and sat beside him. Nick already had three beer bottles littering his coffee table.

"What'd they say to you?" Nick asked. No hi, no how are you. No point, either.

"Not much. Told me I'm a naughty girl. They suspended me."

"Me too," he said, watching Sara taking a big swallow of beer. "I do love you, you know."

Sara looked at him, and something softened in her face. "I know."

* * *

Nick awoke on the sofa hours later with a raging headache, a pain in the cut on his left arm, bruises all over, and an aching neck from the angle he'd been sleeping on. Sara was lying on top of him, either asleep or passed out. Judging from the number of beer bottles he managed to register when his eyes focused, between them they'd drunk all the alcohol he had, and that was a fair amount.

Sara or no Sara, life really sucked at the moment.

It occurred to him that his pager was glowing, and that what had woken him was probably the sound of a message being received. Carefully, doing his best not to disturb Sara, he scooped the pager off the floor with his fingertips and, squinting, read the message. He and Sara were wanted at PD.

_This_ was going to go well.

"Sara?"

"Mmmf," she said, eventually.

"Get up and have a shower. We've got to go down to PD."

Sara muttered a string of swear words, and slowly raised herself up off Nick's chest. "You got any more beer?"

"Doubt it. What the hell do you want more beer for?"

Sara rubbed her forehead. "Best hangover remedy. More alcohol."

"Or not." Nick gently pushed her away, and she made it, unsteadily, to her feet. "Go and have a shower."

With Sara gone, and the sound of the shower reassuring in the background, Nick hauled himself into the kitchen and downed several glasses of water. It had the effect of making him nauseous on top of everything else, but it had to be beneficial somehow. Water was always good for you, right?

He sighed, and made his way to his bedroom in search of clean clothes.

The news wasn't particularly good, but it could, Nick decided, have been very much worse. They had barely escaped being charged with trespassing, and they were both suspended from work on no pay for two weeks. He wasn't charged, either, with shooting Petey, and he was left with the distinct impression that it was part of some plan to maintain public confidence in PD and CSI. Most of the city's population didn't like the street kids, despite - or because of - the fact that they were children. Countless movements to clean up the city had never gotten anywhere. The whole position left Nick very uneasy, simply because he was well aware that they _should_ have been charged. He was a CSI; it was his job to uphold the law - and here he was, skipping around it.

When all that was over, Sara asked the officer in charge about the kids. Nick saw him go to refuse, but then sigh. "Rafael Cortez had been charged with two counts of murder, but not of assault. The DA wants to try him as an adult. As many of the others as we've been able to track down are in foster homes."

"What about - about the girls?"

"We've managed to formally identify one of them. She's Marissa Hernandez, reported missing from Carson City over a year ago. Her mother and stepfather came down this morning to ID the body." The officer swallowed. "The coroner found evidence of long-term abuse on Marissa's body. When we presented her with the evidence, the mother broke down. Stepfather's been charged with abuse and Marissa's body has been released to her mother."

Nick would have taken Sara's hand, but he wasn't sure how appropriate that would be. "No wonder she ran away," she said. "What about Angel?"

"One of the kids says her real name was Lauren, but she was called Angel because of how she looked. She fits the description of a Lauren Melling who went missing from her foster home in Sacramento, California thirteen months ago. Had a father in Vegas, but he died of a drug overdose. Mother's dead, no other relatives we can find."

"What happens to her body if no-one claims it?"

"State will have it cremated."

Nick looked at Sara, feeling slightly suspicious. He knew her too well.

"And Brenda Collins' body has been claimed by her mother, Christina Collins."

"That took a while," Nick noted.

"Her mother's in psychiatric care. There'd been debates about whether Christina could and should claim Brenda's body."

"I'm glad she did," Sara muttered.

"Yeah."

The interview over, there was nothing to do but spend the next two weeks trying to put the pieces of their lives back together. Sara was silent on the way home until they pulled into Nick's driveway, when she said, "And we still don't even know who killed Brenda Collins."

* * *

**TBC...**


End file.
